


The Zuleika Dobson of Trinity

by Naraht



Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault, The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: 1930s, Gen, M/M, Oxford, Pre-Canon, Queer Themes, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 19:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2704397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At a party at Christ Church, Laurie meets some of Charles' dreadful friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Zuleika Dobson of Trinity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Makioka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makioka/gifts).



"My dear, he's too divine," said Lavenham to Charles. "Where on earth did you find him?"

"St. Peter's," said Laurie automatically, having become used to being asked his college and subject at every drinks party since he had come up to Oxford.

"Steps of the Bodleian," replied Charles almost at the same time. "Of course I swept him off to the Grand immediately for a little _tête-à-tête_."

Lavenham laughed, a little titter incongruous from a third-year man who topped six feet. "Well, darling, that explains it. I never darken the door of the library. Perhaps I ought to start?"

"I read English," said Laurie stolidly.

The party was being held in Lavenham's rooms at Christ Church, a set in the Meadow Buildings.

"It's not Peckwater," Charles had said confidentially to Laurie as they strolled down the Broad Walk together, "but he would insist. Once upon a time it would have been social suicide for an Old Etonian to be found in Meadows but he's _such_ a devotee of Ruskin, my dear, he says nothing but Venetian Gothic would suit his decor."

Laurie had nodded knowingly. Though he had read very little Ruskin - in his mind linked with the fusty Victorianism of Tennyson - Charles had taught him to make the inevitable connections between Ruskin, Pater, Wilde, and the aesthetic set who yet faithfully echoed the fading glories of 1920s Oxford.

"And who do you think might be coming?" continued Lavenham, pouring out cocktails with abandon. Charles and Laurie had arrived only ten minutes late; so far they were the only guests.

"All your dreary friends, I imagine," Charles drawled. 

Since entering the room his voice had taken on an inflection unfamiliar to Laurie, who disliked the sound of it immediately.

Lavenham laughed again. "Yes, but guess."

"Oh, Toller, Christie, I don't know... yes, I do know, _please_ don't tell me you've invited Zuleika."

Laurie was taken aback for a moment by the notion of women at an undergraduate party - which seemed more decadent than anything he had yet encountered at Oxford - before realising that this was a nickname and referred to a man.

"Zuleika?" he asked.

"My dear," said Charles, "haven't you heard of the divine J. R. Fleming? The Zuleika Dobson of Trinity? We should go to the theatre more often."

A vague image rose to Laurie's mind of flabby gills and green greasepaint, but he rejected this as clearly unconnected with the young man under discussion.

"He's a very particular friend of mine," said Lavenham firmly, handing Laurie a luridly green cocktail. "Why shouldn't I invite him to my little affairs? He always turns up and, unlike some people I could mention, he's never once been sick in my Ming vase. His manners are delightful."

"That's why he always turns up," said Charles.

"Oh darling, _do_ leave me my dreams..."

***

Separated from Charles by a sudden crush of party guests, Laurie found himself wandering through throngs who must have been familiar in one of Dante's circles of hell. He had drunk his cocktail too quickly; his head was spinning. Though he had only been at the party for an hour, he suspected, in a way that shrinks at too close an inquiry, that he had already been propositioned twice.

Half concealed by a large vase filled with peacock feathers, he paused to take a breath. On the other side of the vase two men were talking intently, gazing across the room at a young man of arresting beauty.

"Oh, Fleming could charm a herd of unicorns," said one.

"Really? _No_."

Overhearing this exchange Laurie felt himself oddly implicated. Perhaps for this reason he lingered to listen further, though he had never meant to eavesdrop.

"Neither boy nor girl, man nor beast. Heaven knows half of Oxford has tried! Lavenham has been in mad pursuit all year but I've told him he'll get nowhere."

"But he _is_ , isn't he?"

"Oh yes, no doubt about that. Froze up stiff as a board when he read for Gielgud's _Romeo and Juliet_ last year. Toller was mortified but anyone could have told him that Fleming isn't the man for making love to Juliet, however fair." He shook his head. "Peggy Ashcroft. Ridiculous thing, bringing in actresses from London."

The other man began to protest but was cut off.

"Nothing wrong with her in the West End. But in OUDS? My dear, what could be more tawdry and commercial? Simply pandering to the masses; you know they want nothing from the theatre but acres of female flesh on display. Whereas I say, if boy actors were good enough for Shakespeare..."

"So Fleming auditioned for Gielgud?"

"He _auditioned_. Said he didn't care for the part. I don't know that he would have taken it on a silver platter, to be perfectly honest."

"Then he sounds a rather silly boy. Can you imagine? Wouldn't Gielgud have just... well, you know about him and Lees-Milne, of course..."

"Darling, that's _ancient_ news. You oughtn't to come to parties if stone-cold gossip is all you've left to offer."

A withering look. "Surely one only comes to parties to give people _new_ things to talk about."

The gaze was suddenly and unexpectedly turned upon Laurie; it made him feel as though he were just about to be asked to audition for a production of _Romeo and Juliet_ , or for something even more intimate. He shuddered and turned away quickly before an invitation could be issued, feeling an abrupt sympathy with the mythical J. R. Fleming, the unicorn.

He did not expect to find the young man concerned standing right at his elbow.

"Terribly sorry," murmured Julian Fleming, though it was Laurie who had run into him.

"No, it's my fault entirely." 

Laurie was embarrassed to find himself flushing. It was little to do with Fleming and more to do with the fervid atmosphere of the party, all exclamations and meaningful emphases and sly insinuations. Trapped horribly; it was like being shoved underground and bricked up there, immured forever in a dank, unwholesome cavern. Laurie felt that he was only breathing air that others had already breathed, sickened with a perfume that lingered just beyond naming. He could not imagine that Fleming would be any different from the rest; they all seemed to be cast out of the same mould.

"I was just..." Laurie began, feeling as though some explanation was needed. "I wanted some air."

"It is rather close, isn't it?" Fleming spoke with a sort of impersonal sympathy. "Let's open up this window."

Laurie could think of nothing to say other than a rather strangulated "thanks." Fleming reached past him to push at the Gothic, arched window; it stuck heavily in its frame, warped by a damp winter. Laurie, now obliged by politeness, lent his own strength to the job. With a squeal it finally relented, letting in a waft of cool air from the river.

Laurie sighed, thinking that he was now in for five minutes of conversation at the least before he could leave. Surreptitiously he checked his watch. Then he sat down on the window seat, wondering whether Fleming might think he was actually feeling ill and let him alone.

But Fleming seemed to take this as invitation enough. He sat down too - not next to Laurie, as Laurie feared for a moment - but right on the Persian carpet where he had been standing.

"I'm Fleming by the way," he said, his knees pulled up to his chin and crossed like a schoolboy's. "Sorry; I'm never any good at proper introductions. Are you a friend of Lavenham?"

"Laurie Odell. And I've never met him before today. I came with Charles Fosticue, actually." Laurie regretted this final sentence for its suggestiveness as soon as he had said it. He reflexively added, "I read English."

"So do I," said Fleming.

"Do you? I don't think I've ever seen you in lectures."

Laurie felt certain that he would have remembered a young man of Fleming's remarkable looks.

Fleming smiled with an air of graceful apology. "I don't often go. Mostly I act."

It was enough for Laurie to understand, if he had not been convinced already by his careless poise, that Fleming was a member of that other class of Oxonians, those for whom a degree was only an afterthought and an inconvenience, rather than something to be saved for and worked towards. At his college Laurie had moved mostly in the company of his fellow scholars and exhibitioners; it was his friendship with Charles that had introduced him to these other worlds, previously known only from leafing through the pages of the _Cherwell_ and _Isis_. 

Fleming had featured in those pages more than once. Had he been an Isis Idol last term? It seemed to Laurie that he had. Seeing him in the flesh brought snippets of the article back to Laurie now, reviving an image of the tattered common room copy with its dogeared pages and tea stains. _Drives a red MG... University Air Squadron... out of term he rides with the Berkeley Hunt... one of the most promising young actors Oxford has seen in our generation...._ The photograph had been unequivocally stunning; Laurie, taken by surprise when he had merely been filling the idle half hour between a tutorial and lunch, had closed the magazine quickly lest he be thought to be studying the page in admiration. No one at St. Peter's would have understood that he was moved by raven-black hair only in a purely aesthetic sense.

It occurred to Laurie that he ought to be slightly in awe, but something in him revolted at the idea; in any case there was something about Fleming's manner than seemed calculated to disarm, to underwhelm rather than impress. Or there was always the distinct possibility that he was simply not that bright.

"Do tell me to shove off if there's someone you'd rather talk to," added Fleming.

"Oh no," said Laurie. "I was just finding it all a bit much."

He had realised, belatedly, that Fleming was probably the safest man in the room to engage in conversation. If half of Oxford was after him, he was hardly likely to fall upon Laurie Odell of St. Peter's.

"They're rather nice if you give them a chance. It's all performance really; that's what makes it so fascinating."

"Does it?" said Laurie doubtfully. "So is that what it's all about?"

Fleming shrugged. "I suppose it must be. An art in itself."

It seemed to Laurie that he spoke with the air of an outsider. For a moment he felt a glimmer of hope that he might have lighted upon a kindred spirit, disguised and unlikely though he might seem.

"But if you're not one of... I mean to say, doesn't it seem rather..."

What Laurie was groping towards was a very simple question: _if you're not queer, why on earth would you come to these ghastly parties?_ But he could hardly say this outright. Among other things it would mean acknowledging - to himself at least - the reason why he himself was enduring this purgatorial round of cocktails. 

Fleming's contemplative look was exquisite. His lashes fluttered slightly as he thought. It would have read as clearly from the back of the gods as it did from three feet away. And it was all achieved without the slightest furrow marring his smooth brow.

After a long pause, during which Laurie had almost given up hope, Fleming answered. "I don't suppose I am, really. But it hardly seems to matter. People are people, after all."

He spoke with that vague, serene indifference which can belong only to the semi-divine. 

Laurie, to whom it mattered very much indeed, was knocked half speechless. "Are they?" 

He knew that he was being wilfully obtuse. He imagined he sounded about as dim as Fleming seemed to be, but Fleming merely shrugged and smiled agreeably.

"Can I get you another drink?" he asked. "Or something to eat? Lavenham always has very nice plover's eggs."

He seemed genuinely eager to be of service. Laurie, who was still feeling rather dizzy, might have forgot himself to the extent of asking for a glass of water if he had not been distracted by the sudden apparition of Lavenham, who had at some point in the evening changed from evening dress into an elaborately dyed silk kimono.

"What little minxes," he said. "To think that you could break my heart and Charles's all together. We've been looking everywhere for the two of you."

Though his tone was ostensibly bantering, there was a note of poisonous jealousy beneath it.

"I didn't intend to break anyone's heart," said Laurie, getting quickly to his feet. "In fact I was just going."

He left without a backward glance at either Lavenham or Fleming, emerging with immeasurable relief into the coolness of twilight. It was only after he stepped into Tom Quad that he realised he had not taken his leave of Charles, but to go back was unthinkable. Tonight, or ever. 

He spent a long while sitting on the edge of Mercury, gazing at the remnants of a June sunset reflected amidst the lily pads of the fountain. When the first stars began to appear in the sky he got to his feet and walked back across the road to St. Peter's, thinking only of Lanyon.


End file.
